First of all, ask me anything! I'll answer to the best of my ability. I'm by no means a pro, but my instructor and I spent a good 5 hours together figuring out exactly what needed to be done for a blind person to go snowboarding safely, with someone that had never taught the blind before.

Second of all, my thoughts on the sport, in general and as a legally blind person.

In general:

1. Safety equipment. Wear it. No if, ands, or buts. Without my wrist braces I would have sprained or broken my wrists several times over. I didn't take too many hard head blows, well, none bad at all, but the helmet saved me from at least a few headaches.

2. The amount of balance required is incredible. It's not impossible if you have bad balance, but it's going to take some time.

3. Stopping by stepping up on your heals, or toes, depending on how you're looking down the mountain, is extremely tough, and you will lean too far, many, many times.

4. Just standing up after strapping in is a tough thing to learn. You have to get your butt over your feet, which is rather hard when your feet are spread, and you're sitting on your butt. Pro tip, roll on to your stomach and push yourself up.

As a blind person.

1. The hardest part for me, which neither my teacher or I thought about ahead of time, was speed. There's no easy way to tell if you're moving at a snails pace, or flying down the mountain. Sure, you'll feel the wind blowing against your face ... but that could very well just be the wind. Many times I fell when attempting to link turns and slid, skid, or rolled, a lot more than I thought. We had no system in place for this, but next time we'll use a 0-5 scale. 0 is not moving, 2 is perfect with a little room to speed up, 3 is perfect, but on the high end, 5 is when he's stopping me so I don't break my neck when I hit the snow.

2. Telling which direction to go is a challenge as well. A slope isn't like a paved road, there is more than just up and down. The mountain has slopes that flatten out at points, funnel at points, and curve at points. While linking turns I had no idea when to go from flat fotted to toe or heal, so he'd shout out "straight" whenever I was pointed at the goal, and that was my signal to switch over and keep turning.

3. The ski lift can be described to you, but it's still going to take you by surprise. When they tell you to keep your board up and straight, they mean it, keep your body slightly twisted in the seat, to keep that board in line with the line, until you're unable to reach the ground. Then once the safety bar goes back up, and it's time to get off, get just like that again, but now prep your back foot towards its binding, when the teacher says to stand, stand, straight up, and get that rear foot to it's binding. Just go right down the slope and you'll be fine ... my first time, I fell back in to my teachers arms, second time I fell forward, third time, slip down like a boss, fourth time I did good ... until I dipped my toes and started heading for a slope, and took a dive at an extremely slow pace ...

4. Skating, as in one foot bound, the other used to push you along, is a struggle to figure out. There is no perfect way to do it, and you'll do it differently in different settings. One thing to ask your teacher is to guide you through the flattest possible way. Skating on flat isn't too bad, sight or no sight, but being on a slope, and having to lift your push foot off the ground, can be very ... slippery.

5. Hands on is the way to go. While first getting my balance down, and learning to stop, my teacher was literally directly in front, or behind, me, depending on the situation. Part of this was to catch me so that whenever my stop failed I wouldn't need to get up completely, but also to be right there to observe and give pointers. When I was ready to go down the hill, and start linking turns, he stayed within arms reach, high five range, so that he wasn't in my way, but if anything happened he'd be there within a moment to see if I'm okay, or stop me if I was getting out of control. I'm told this is fairly standard though, vision or not.

All in all, I'm absolutely doing it again, probably many times.

I probably missed quite a bit, but ask me anything, and I'll answer to the best of my ability. I'm by no means a pro, but my instructor and I spent a good 5 hours together figuring out exactly what needed to be done for a blind person to go snowboarding safely, with someone that had never taught the blind before.